


Chaos Theory (Killing All Dinosaurs Remix)

by Marks



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-07
Updated: 2007-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-04 05:17:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2953733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marks/pseuds/Marks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The butterfly flaps its way back to Japan, only to have someone else fly into the pros.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chaos Theory (Killing All Dinosaurs Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Echizen Effect](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/89705) by Mousapelli. 



> Remix thingy for Mousapelli.

_YO TEZUKA-BUCHOU!_

_Everyone at Seigaku has been following your matches! There've been about ten zillion articles about you in the paper and I think my little sister has been sleeping with your picture under her pillow. I think Fuji-senpai gave it to her! Weird, huh???_

_TEZUKA-BUCHOU, FIGHT! ATTACK MODE!! SHOW WIMBLEDON WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A NATIONAL CONTENDER!!!!_

_Over here, everything is cool. Stupid mamushi keeps trying to take over practice, but I'm captain now, not him, so I get to overrule him!! Thanks again for putting me in charge of the team because I won't let you down!!!!1 Everyone is working hard, even though I spent half the night awake because **somebody** wouldn't get off the phone because **somebody** wanted to keep talking about your match. That stupid Echiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii_

***

_Tezuka-buchou,_

_I apologize deeply for whatever Momoshiro said to you. I can't tell what it was because the email sent accidentally while we were trying to wake him up. He fell asleep with his fat head on the keyboard, and now Ryuzaki-sensei has to order a new I-key because another one got stuck up the idiot's nose._

_Good match last night._

_\-- Kaidoh Kaoru_

***

_Buchou --_

***

A ball whizzed by Ryoma making his hair flutter around his face before lodging into the fence behind him. He cursed under his breath and pulled his cap down over his eyes.

"I know that word!" Momoshiro declared, delighted and horrified.

"What word, Momo-buchou?" Ryoma switched his racquet to his right hand and bounced the ball twice, preparing for a Twist Serve. At Ryoma's current full strength, even Momoshiro couldn't return that.

Momoshiro returned it. Ryoma cursed again. He hadn't been using his full strength anyway.

" _That_ word, Echizen. You can talk in English all you want, but I know all those dirty words you use." Momoshiro was at his most annoying when he was like this.

"Whatever." Ryoma walked over to the bench and grabbed his towel, pulling the tab on a new can of Ponta. Kaidoh jumped down from the ref's chair where he'd been watching their match and hissed at Ryoma, but didn't say anything else. _Whatever._ Ryoma watched as Kaidoh stalked two courts over to doubles practice, wordlessly correcting Katsuo's form and subsequently scaring the hell out of him.

Ryoma took another drink and nodded. It was about time someone showed him how to hold his racquet correctly. Right now, the only thing making Kachirou and Katsuo live up to the Next Coming of the Golden Pair title they'd somehow acquired was their losing record.

"Are you actually ready to play tennis now?" Momoshiro asked loudly, hanging over Ryoma's shoulder and probably irreversibly damaging his eardrums. "I want to get home to watch Tezuka-buchou in the quarterfinals."

Ryoma scowled and shrugged him off, then walked off the court to the clubhouse. He hoped the next time Momoshiro got something stuck up his nose it got jammed up so far that he suffocated.

***

Tezuka-buchou's Wimbledon match three nights ago had been his first against a ranked player. Of course he'd won, Ryoma knew he wasn't about to lose to Tursunov. Che. Ryoma had beaten Hewitt in his fourth round Open match after all, and he was higher ranked.

But watching the match with Fuji had done weird things to Ryoma's stomach, and he didn't even think that was because of the snacks Fuji had made. Tursanov had taken the loss pretty well, and Buchou had taken the win even better, stoically shaking hands across the net and answering reporters' questions with polite, single word responses.

It was just...

There had been a rally in the fourth set, a really long one where Tezuka needed the point to push the match into tiebreak, and by the end Ryoma had found himself yelling at the television while Fuji's eyes were wide, wide, wide. Tezuka had to use a Zero Shiki drop shot, and Ryoma unclenched a fist he didn't remember making. His hand shook as much as if he'd been across the net from Tezuka himself.

It had been exhilarating watching. Thrilling. _Weird_. And Ryoma hadn't understood why.

Afterwards, Fuji had told him he really missed playing Tezuka that way, missed their never-ending rallies, and Ryoma's excitement had turned to ice, like that bastard monkey-king Atobe had just socked him in the gut. And Ryoma hadn't understood that, either. He still didn't.

Ryoma shut off the shower and grabbed his towel. He wished he could fight this feeling off, the one that felt like a million centipedes crawling around under his skin.

***

"Oi, Echizen," Momoshiro called as Ryoma walked out of the clubhouse again, "I hope you know you're getting about a million laps tomorrow! A million and ten if you keep me up after Tezuka-buchou's match again."

Ryoma ignored him and hefted his bag up on his shoulder, breaking into a jog as he left the Seigaku grounds. Training that wasn't tennis was usually one of those irritating things that Ryoma forced himself to do, but today the feeling of his feet pounding against the pavement worked for him. He ran longer and faster than he ordinarily would, through the park he usually avoided because of the high chance of Inui-related run-ins, until sweat was dripping off his hair and into his eyes, and his body forced him to slow down. Then a weird prickly feeling unrelated to his skin centipedes ran down his spine, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and he heard the crunching of leaves that weren't coordinated with his own movement.

He stopped suddenly, and someone ran right into his back. Ryoma turned around.

"Kaidoh-senpai?" Kaidoh's cheeks were dark red and he was frowning even more than usual.

"Echizen," Kaidoh grunted and stuck his hands deep into the pockets of his shorts.

Ryoma tried to catch his breath, staring down at Kaidoh's bare ankles. He smirked and took off his hat to push his hair out of his face. "Were you following me?"

"You didn't stretch properly before you left," Kaidoh said, which wasn't really an answer.

"So what?" Ryoma threw his bag onto a nearby set of steps, then dug through it for a water bottle and took a drink. Gross. It was warm from sitting in his bag all day, and not fizzy or sweet. Hydration was overrated.

"So you're going to pull a muscle and be useless against St. Rudolph's."

Ryoma shrugged and sat on the steps. He could beat them on one leg anyway.

Kaidoh sat next to him. "What the hell is with you, Echizen?"

"Nothing," Ryoma mumbled. "I'm like I always am."

"Listen, he didn't leave you behind."

Ryoma threw a sharp glance in Kaidoh's direction, but Kaidoh was leaning back and staring up at the sky, not at him.

"Do you remember when you went to the U.S. Open?" Kaidoh asked.

"No, I forgot," Ryoma said, rolling his eyes. Kaidoh did look over then, and the look on his face wasn't pretty. Ryoma winced. "Sorry, Kaidoh-senpai. Yeah, I remember."

"Tezuka-buchou played Fuji-senpai over and over that whole time," Kaidoh said. "There were these never-ending games --"

"Yeah, Fuji-senpai told me," Ryoma interrupted.

Kaidoh hissed, but went on like Ryoma hadn't said a thing. "Ryuzaki-sensei would yell at them, and they wouldn't even listen. Buchou was unstoppable then, and you know what? He was like that even after you beat him and went back to America. He was like that right until you showed up for nationals. Do you get it?"

Ryoma didn't think he'd ever heard Kaidoh say so many words all at once. He shook his head.

"Then you're stupid."

"I am not."

Kaidoh grunted. "Then prove it. Why did you come back?"

"To play in the nationals with you," Ryoma replied.

"No, you didn't," Kaidoh growled. Ryoma didn't understand why Kaidoh was getting mad at him, but he _looked_ mad. "If you were gonna play nationals no matter what, you never would have left in the first place. _Why_ did you come back?"

"I told you."

"Don't be stupid! You won against Hewitt in the fourth round."

Ryoma looked down at the steps. "So?"

"Then you _lost_ , Echizen."

" _So?_ "

"So you think Tezuka-buchou's going to win tonight, and then you'll never be able to surpass him again. You're a quitter."

"I am not."

"You're thirteen and got all the way to the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam and lost to Federer, the number one tennis player in the world. Then you quit and that makes you an idiot. What the hell are you still doing here? Blind people can see Tezuka-buchou went pro because of you."

"I hate losing."

"Who likes it?" Kaidoh asked. "No one's leaving you behind. I thought-- I thought it was going to happen to me, too, but it didn't. So stop being an ass."

"Kaidoh-senpai--"

"Ah, Kaidoh, there you are."

Ryoma jumped about ten feet in the air and whirled around. Inui and Fuji stood behind them in their high school uniforms, seemingly having materialized out of nowhere. He _hated_ it when they did that.

"Inui-senpai," Kaidoh greeted.

Inui smiled and offered Kaidoh a hand up, which Kaidoh took. "Are you coming over to watch Tezuka's match tonight?" Inui asked.

Kaidoh's face was getting red again for some stupid reason Ryoma couldn't figure out, and he wouldn't look at Ryoma anymore or Fuji at all. "Yeah, I told my mom I was eating with you."

"We'd better get going if we're going to have any free time beforehand," Inui said.

Ryoma caught Fuji grinning and raising his eyebrows. He was so creepy.

"For training, of course," Inui added hastily.

"Yeah, okay." Kaidoh was still blushing, but he was also staring at Inui without blinking or looking away, and _that_ was creepy, too.

Did Grand Slam tournaments always make people act weird? Ryoma thought about looking across the court at Tezuka again and what Kaidoh said, and decided right then he wouldn't be in Japan during the U.S. Open so he could find out.

Fuji tapped Ryoma's shoulder and smiled. "Did you want to watch with me again tonight?"

"Yeah, okay. Can we invite Momo-buchou to watch with us?" Ryoma asked. Maybe he'd only get a couple hundred thousand laps that way.

Fuji's smile grew wider. "The more the merrier, Echizen."

"See you at school tomorrow, Fuji," Inui said. He waved at Ryoma. "Nice seeing you, too, Echizen. Did you want me to call you after I call Oishi, Kawamura, Kikumaru, and Tezuka's parents with the post-match analysis?" Ryoma felt the horror crawl onto his face.

"You'll be too tired for that," Kaidoh said, shoving Inui forward, making him stumble forward a step.

Inui's eyeglasses caught the glare off the setting sun. "Oh?"

"Yeah," Kaidoh said, shoving again. Then Ryoma thought he heard Kaidoh mutter "Sap," under his breath.

Inui grinned at Kaidoh and stole the bandana off his head. Kaidoh didn't do anything, just grabbed his bag and started walking. Inui jogged to catch up with him, tying the bandana around his wrist as he went. "Kaidoh, over the last two nights I've thoroughly analyzed Tezuka and Federer-san's data, and their respective chances of winning this quarterfinals match, and I have determined that there are several recommendations that I could have made for Tezuka if he'd simply answer his mobile phone once in awh--"

"Shut up, senpai. You talk too much."

That was true, but Inui laughed like it was some funny joke, and Ryoma thought he saw Kaidoh grab Inui's hand and squeeze it really fast as they walked off, but Ryoma had run a long time and had to be hallucinating.

Fuji handed Ryoma his tennis bag. "Ready to go?"

"Yeah." Ryoma stuck his hat back on his head and squinted up at Fuji. "Play a match with me first?"

"Of course, Echizen," Fuji said and opened his eyes. "But we'll have to finish before the Wimbledon broadcast begins."

"Che, I'll beat you _way_ before that," Ryoma said.

Fuji chuckled. "We'll see."

***

_Tezuka -_

_Too bad about your loss last night, though how many teenagers can claim that they pushed Roger Federer into five sets, two into tiebreak? Other than Echizen, of course. The two of us and Momoshiro watched you after Echizen and I played a match, and I can't remember ever seeing Echizen quite so animated. Our match was one of the best I've had in a long while, since you left in fact, and even though I lost, I don't know that that will always be the case. Speaking of playing matches against Echizen, he is determined to enter the professional circuit again so he can play in the U.S. Open this year, and who am I to discourage him?_

_How would someone who isn't a thirteen-year-old wunderkind even go about doing that? If a person was interested in facing stronger players regularly again, that is. Well. We can talk about it when you get back to Japan, yes?_

_See you soon,  
Fuji_

***

_Tezuka --_

_To set your mind at ease about your loss against Roger Federer-san and your continued successes in your professional endeavors, I have written a list of key changes you need to make to your training regiment, and my own observations regarding your closest local rivals, namely Echizen Ryoma and Fuji Syuusuke, which will help you make the best of the situation and maximize your chances at the upcoming U.S. Open._

_Firstly, Kaidoh has been working with me in encouraging Echizen's gifts, and believes he made a breakthrough this afternoon, but as you know Echizen often follows the beat of his own drummer and who knows whasdl;ks_

_...Tezuka-buchou, this is Kaidoh Kaoru again. Sorry for another e-mail, but I just kicked Inui-senpai off his computer. You played well last night, but Inui-senpai has been up half the night because of you, and he can talk to you the next time you're in Japan. At least he didn't fall asleep at his keyboard._

_I'd tell you to watch out for Echizen, but that'd be stupid._

_\-- Kaidoh_

***

_Buchou--_

I'm going to beat him before you can.

\-- Echizen


End file.
